History of Bordeaux

There are no known paintings of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II and mother of Richard the Lion Heart. This depiction is from the cover of ''Aliénor d'Aquitaine' by Régine Pernoud, Editons Albin Michel (Nouvelle Edition 1965).

Chateau Haut-Brion, the 'First' of the First Growths, 17th Century.

Chateau Margaux in the 18th century.

In quality and quantity, Bordeaux is the premier fine wine region of the world.

Story By Ch'ng Poh Tiong

Two thousand years ago, a Celtic tribe of warriors settled in Bordeaux.

These early immigrants, physically and mentally weary from restless fighting, felt that it was time to claim a permanent abode.

Bordeaux ’s temperate climate was considered a blessing. The region was also endowed with other natural advantages. Served by calm, flowing rivers that fed into a broad estuary which itself decanted into the wide sea, easy transportation, and therefore trade, was all but assured.

Indeed, Bordeaux was destined to be a great port-city, a fate, it still possesses today and which it shares with other great port cities such as Qingdao, Tianjin, Shanghai, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Kaoshiung and Singapore.

Except that then, Bordeaux was known by another name.

The tribe of Celtic warriors, the Bituriges Vivisques, named the town ‘Burdigala’.

It is believed that in the first century A.D., the Bituriges Vivisques decided to plant vines. The variety they sunk into the ground was called Biturica, which some people think is the ancestor of the Cabernet Sauvignon.

Many, many vintages pass and we now leap a thousand and a hundred years into the 12th century. We find ourselves landing in a period which, more than any other, is going to set Bordeaux on a course to becoming the world’s predominant wine producing and wine exporting region.

This defining era, as befits any great epoch, is to be ushered in by nothing less than a marriage.

THE ENGLISH CONNECTION

If it is true that matrimony represents the single most important event in a person’s life (apart from the birth itself), then that between Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine, and Henry Plantagenet, the future King of England, not only had a bearing on their own two lives, the union also influenced forever the fate of Bordeaux — the region, city and the wine.

Eleanor was born around A.D. 1120. She succeeded her father as the Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Saintonge on 9th April 1137. That same year, on 25th July, this remarkable woman married Louis VII, King of France, at Bordeaux Cathedral. They went on to have two daughters.

On 18th March 1152, after fifteen years of marriage, the King of France divorced Eleanor on the ground of consanguinity. Or was the real reason because she did not produce him an heir to the throne? After all, fifteen years seems an unusual long time to find out that your wife is too closely related to you to be married to you in the first place.

Exactly two months after her divorce, Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry Plantagenet on 18th May 1152, also at Bordeaux Cathedral.

(The name ‘Plantagenet’ comes from the broom flower that Henry’s father Geoffrey — the Count of Anjou and the Duke of Normandy — wore in his hat).

Eleanor was thirteen years older than her new husband, who was born on 5th March 1133. Indeed, when Eleanor first got married to Louis VII in 1137, her future husband was only four years old.

Not only did Henry Plantagenet acquired a mature, strong woman as a wife, Eleanor also brought into the marriage her possessions of Aquitaine (which included Bordeaux), Auvergne and Poitou.

By right of his marriage, Henry became Duke of Aquitaine (he had, earlier on 7th December 1151, succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou).

Henry and Eleanor’s crowning moment took place on 19th December 1154 when, succeeding his second cousin Stephen, he was crowned as Henry II in Westminster Abbey, London, and Eleanor as Queen.

One of Henry’s immediate goals was to establish order in his kingdom which had seen years of internal warfare and constant civil strife. To this end, he promulgated a code of written laws, credited as forming the basis of the English legal system.

Henry himself frequently set in judgement over cases (perhaps the king was inspired by the wise Salomon of biblical times) and was only too aware that laws are only as effective as when they are also just. The king could not of course be everywhere at the same time and so, circuit judges representing and dispensing royal justice travelled the length and breadth of the country. Trial by local juries also gave the common people a sense of involvement with, indeed being a part of, the king’s justice.

Eleanor was a much more complex and tempestuous character.

The queen formented so much discourse between her sons that her husband held her prisoner for over fifteen years to control and contain her from scheming amongst their children.

Eleanor and Henry II had four sons and three daughters. Two of the sons became kings. Not many people know this, but Richard I (1189 - 1199), better known as ‘The Lion Heart’, was born to them and spent most of his 10-year reign not in England (only ten months), but in captivity in the war of the crusades and in France.

Henry II died on 6th July 1189 at Chinon Castle in the Loire. He was buried in Fontevrault Abbey, France. Eleanor, who was already thirteen years older than him to start with, lived another fifteen years. She died on 1st April 1204 at Fontevrault Abbey where she was also buried.

Whatever the state of their domestic relations, the union of Henry and Eleanor had a most direct impact for the wines of Bordeaux.

Since the region was part of the dowry that Eleanor brought into the marriage and because Henry subsequently became king of England, the effect was that the wine trickled into England. Easy trade between various parts of the same kingdom, after all, was something to be encouraged.

Later, King John (1199 – 1216), son of Henry and Eleanor and younger brother of Richard I, in order to win the favour of the people of Bordeaux, exempted their wine from being taxed, effectively making Bordeaux wine cheaper than any other wine imported into England. Accordingly, Bordeaux wine not only found acceptance in England, it flourished there.

So well received was Bordeaux wine that the English gave it something of a nickname.

‘Claret’, to this day, is something of an ‘English’ wine in the sense that it refers to, historically, the relatively light and light-coloured red wine that came from Bordeaux. (Today of course, claret continues to be used by the English to refer to red wine from Bordeaux even if the wine is no longer so light in weight nor in colour).

The trade in Bordeaux wine was greatly helped by the fact that England, a mighty sea-faring nation, had a huge fleet. This same fleet was able to sail effortlessly up the Gironde estuary into the port of Bordeaux itself. At the dawn of the 14th century, the fleet numbered more than 900 ships, with an annual cargo exceeding the equivalent of eight million cases (since wines were not yet then shipped in bottles nor in wooden cases).

At the time, the wine was held in 900-litre barrels (equivalent to four modern-day 225-litre oak barrels or barriques). Till this day, the capacity of ships are gauged in this manner.

‘All good things,’ they say, ‘must come to an end’.

In 1453, 299 years after Henry Plantagenet was crowned king of England, the French re- conquered Aquitaine. A huge battle was fought in Castillon, 20 kilometres west of Saint-Emilion.

Till today, but in a more carnival atmosphere and as something of a tourist attraction, that famous battle is re-created annually in colourful costumes on the plains of Castillon.

Bordeaux became French again. But the English never lost their taste for the wine. If anything, thanks to them (see following story), Bordeaux wine was set to become even more international in reputation.

THE DUTCH INFLUENCE

In the 17th century, Bordeaux felt the effects of a Holland asserting itself as a major world economic power. This, in spite of the fact that Holland was, and still is, a small, landlocked country with little by way of natural resources.

In fact, it is probably because it is so disadvantaged by way of Nature, that Holland struck out onto the world stage in such impressive ways.

Trade was the key to prosperity.

The people of Bordeaux however found the Dutch to be quite different customers from the English altogether. The new clientele was more interested in brandy (the word itself originates from the Dutch ‘brandwijn’), and white wine, both dry and sweet, which were mostly distilled to make them cheaper to transport (water was subsequently added to the ‘concentrate’).

Some claret was also bought by the Dutch but it was not of primary interest.

Perhaps even more important than their buying power was the engineering expertise the Dutch contributed to the vineyards of Bordeaux.

Holland, being a small country, land was of course a very scarce commodity and commanded a premium. Accordingly, the Dutch perfected methods of increasing usable land, especially by draining marshlands. The same skills they lent to the Médoc (in more modern times Dutch engineering has also helped to reclaim land from the sea for tiny Singapore).

Until the Dutch came along, the Graves represented the main vineyards for Bordeaux wine. Indeed, Chateau Pape Clement has a history going back to the 14th century, even as Haut-Brion can properly be referred to as ‘The Elder Statesman’ of the First Growths, famous since the mid-1600s, even before Margaux, Lafite, Latour and Mouton existed.

THE BIRTH OF FINE BORDEAUX

The beginning of the 18th century finds France and England at war.

French wines, while not banned, were however heavily taxed in the enemy country. Meanwhile, those of one’s allies were given preferential treatment.

The Methuen Treaty of 1703 laid out that in exchange for Portugal admitting British woollen goods in perpetuity, Britain, in return, would ensure that duty on French wines should never be less than 50% higher than on the wines of Portugal.

The treaty had at least two important consequences. In the first place, it popularised Portuguese wine (the ‘creation’ and subsequent success of Port owes much to this). Secondly, because French wines were taxed highly and the tax based on volume, this meant that cheap, everyday-drinking French wines were the most adversely affected. This was only logical since if one had to pay say, $X in tax on two different wines, one might as well drink a higher priced but better wine because in percentage term, one would be paying less tax on the higher priced wine.

The stage was therefore set for the creation of fine Bordeaux wine.

And the cultivation of a sophisticated clientele.

This sophistication could not, however, be in the abstract but laid in the practical.

It was based on the belief — and displayed skills — that a person could taste and tell the difference between a better, higher priced wine than one which is less good and less expensive.

A logical extension of this talent was an even more developed ability to identify the differences between wines from different communes within Bordeaux and later, between different chateaux.

The climax of these skills lies in being able to tell the differences between differing qualities in different vintages of different communes and different chateaux.

nly then could we distinguish between great and not-so-great wines.

Here, therefore, is my piece of personal advice. If you can’t tell the difference in any or all of that, don’t pay the difference. Unless you have nothing better to do with your money.

DEVASTATION BY PHYLLOXERA

The beginning of the 19th century (even before the vineyards of Bordeaux and those of the rest of Europe’s were devastated by an insect called ‘phylloxera’) was a difficult time for the bordelais.

Sales of their wine were down and the only thing to do was to bide time and wait, and hope, for a recovery.

Gradually (like the financial crisis that hit the whole of Asia in 1997), things did improve.

Then, in 1851, the vineyards were struck by the powdery mildew disease. It was not until six years later, in 1857, that a treatment was discovered. Spraying the vine with sulphur proved to be an effective cure.

Ironically, this was a time of increasing prosperity for Bordeaux as was reflected by the 1855 Classification of the greatest wines of the Médoc (Chateau Haut-Brion being the only exception from the Graves) and Sauternes. Bordeaux wine, already well-known, its fame spread even further afield.

Then, disaster struck again. This time, it resulted in the near-complete devastation of Bordeaux’s vineyards. The scourge had come from another continent, via stowaway vines, carried on board a ship from America to Europe.

The six-legged phylloxera insect attacked the root-system of the vine, strangling and killing it. Not only Bordeaux but all the vineyards of France and Europe were affected.

First striking in the 1860s, phylloxera was not eradicated until later in that century. (In Bordeaux, the period so affected was 1875 - 1892).

The solution laid in grafting French varieties onto American root-stocks since these were resistant to phylloxera. One problem solved, another reappeared. Powdery mildew attacked the imported American root-stocks. A new mixture of lime and copper sulphate was used to combat the fungus. Today, ‘Bordeaux mixture’, as it is called, is used throughout the world to treat mildew.

BORDEAUX TODAY

Of France’s greatest wines, including Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy, some of the sweet wines of the Loire and the Rhone, Bordeaux is unique in that it is the name of a wine, a region and a city.

No other great French wine can claim the same.

You can drink champagne when in the region of Champagne but you won’t be able to do it in a village, town or city called ‘Champagne’. The same is true for ‘Burgundy’. Only in Bordeaux can you score such a hat-trick.

In terms of quality and quantity, Bordeaux, in the south-west of France, is the greatest wine region in the world.

The Department of the Gironde stretches some 105 kilometres from north to south and 130 kilometres from east to west. The total surface area is over a million hectares. Not all that is of course vineyards. Even so, with more than one hundred thousand hectares of Appellation d’Origine Controlée or AOC quality wines, the vineyards of Bordeaux constitute the largest high-quality wine-producing area in France, twice that of the Cotes du Rhone and five times bigger than the Beaujolais vineyards.

On an international level, the Bordeaux vineyards are almost twice that of the whole of Australia and equivalent to those of all of Chile.

There are 57 appellations in Bordeaux. Not all of them are obvious to wine lovers. ‘Pauillac’ and ‘Margaux’ may be spoken everywhere in the world where Bordeaux wines are celebrated, but others such as ‘Sainte-Foy Bordeaux’ and ‘Entre-deux-Mers Haut-Benauge’ are obscure even to the most enquiring mind.

In spite of the diversity that 57 appellations present, there is, nevertheless, a common thread that runs through Bordeaux’s many different wines, an invisible line that is sewn into the Bordeaux fabric. It’s like Chinese cuisine. Whether the dish is Fukien, Cantonese, Teochew, Szechuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing or Shandong, there is something decidedly Chinese about it.

Bordeaux is of course more than just wine. It is also a city. And a prosperous one at that. There are boutiques and departmental stores, a grand theatre, museums, parks and, as befits any city of any consequence, traffic jam. (Thankfully, the modern and efficient Merignac Airport, which serves Bordeaux and the rest of the Gironde, experiences less traffic).

There are of course also wine shops, and the range and quality of the restaurants and casual eating places seem to be improving all the time.

Buildings whose facades have been blackened with pollution have been scrubbed clean; more traffic signs have been posted in all the right places; and, there’s even a new tramway linking both sides of the Garonne, from Avenue Thiers all the way to the historic Quai des Chartons.

The smaller eating places and restaurants along the roads to, and byroads around, the wine chateaux are also very enjoyable.

Bordeaux, the region and beyond, are also equally captivating.

The scenery is diverse and ravishing. From well-tended vineyards to riverside restaurants teeming with fresh shellfish to the wooded Landes Forest, and to the beaches of Arcachon and the sand dunes of Pyla (the largest in Europe), the best thing about Bordeaux is all of three things that bear its famous name — the city, the region and, of course, the wine itself.